THEY stalk the countryside like giant Martian machines from HG Wells’ science-fiction classic The War Of The Worlds.

And just like the alien invaders their aim is to bring mankind to heel.

I’m talking about wind turbines, those towering monstrosities that have blighted our landscape as part of the climate change worship so beloved of the chattering classes.

The trendy metropolitan elite can’t see wind farms from their windows in Notting Hill, Hampstead or Highgate so they’re blinkered to the reality of the eyesore that has been created in the dubious name of going green.

But drive around Britain and you’re constantly shocked by the way these unwanted windmills are multiplying.

The Martians are breeding at an alarming rate. And for what?

So speculators can make a killing out of ludicrously-high subsidies for producing piffling amounts of energy at times of the year when there’s already enough – and at a price that’s scandalously inflated.

Wind farms? Money farms more like – and it’s your money that’s paying for them through taxes and energy bills.

There’s no greater joy than a sinner who repents so we should all be celebrating the Prime Minister’s transformation from husky-loving greenie to vote-loving realist.

David Cameron’s message is simple: if the Tories win the election next year there’ll be no more new onshore wind farms.

Quite a change from a man who once flew to the Arctic Circle for a photoshoot with a dog sled and who even installed a wind turbine on his roof.

He has also promised to scrap the crazy subsidy scheme, which can reward people for producing less energy, and change the planning system so councils can veto new windmills.

As ever in politics there’s more to this than meets the eye.

The biggest cheerleaders for wind power are his coalition partners the Lib Dems so with the general election a year away Cameron desperately needs to demonstrate that the love affair with that loser Nick Clegg is ending.

Pulling the plug on wind farms is akin to chucking the wedding ring across the kitchen.

But we should bear in mind that “no new wind farms” doesn’t actually mean there will be no new wind farms.

Pulling the plug on wind farms is akin to chucking the wedding ring across the kitchen

An estimated 3,000 turbines have already got planning consent and should be up and running by 2020 – so five years after the election the UK’s windmill population will have almost doubled.

And the Energy Secretary has just announced that five new wind farms will be built offshore, boasting that this will only add another £11 a year to household energy bills that are already eye-wateringly high.

The Left love two things: trying to scare you that the planet is going to die and making you pay through the nose for energy as a punishment for those wicked coalburning, oil-guzzling years of carbon emissions.

Remember it was a planet-saving Labour energy minister who imposed extra taxes on your gas and leccy bills during Gordon Brown’s ill-fated reign.

So just when we needed electricity the most, wind farms produced the least.

Wind farm supporters admit that over the course of a year turbines only operate at between 20-30 per cent of their maximum output.

Some days they are estimated to supply only enough power for 25,000 homes.

Yet wind power costs up to three times more than conventional power.

Meanwhile we have enough coal to last at least 200 years and have natural gas that could revolutionise the energy industry in the way it has done in America if the Left could get over its entrenched, illogical opposition to fracking.

One academic study by Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University has warned that if the Government’s present policies for meeting renewable energy targets were to go unchanged it would increase household bills by between 40-60 per cent in six years.

Wind farms would need another £124billion of investment, he says, whereas the same amount of power could be produced from new gas power stations for £13billion.

I don’t buy the argument that erecting a forest of giant turbines will save the planet any more than I believe my car exhaust is destroying it.

I’d like to see all the green apologists booted out of public office – but maybe I’m tilting at windmills.